it

may seem perfect, but it crumbles under the slightest touch, and even a breath of air annihilates it in a moment. It is thus idolatry itself has

its ground in human nature, in that which makes us religious beings, and in the fact that there is a God whom we should worship and adore. Take away these truths, deprive man of his religious nature, and we see idolatry no more.

It is so with the doctrine of endless punishment. It is a great fact that there is a moral governor over the world, under whose all-perfect administration no single sin can pass undetected or unpunished. It is also a fact that every sinner in the world feels a consciousness of guilt deep within his soul; feels that he is blame-worthy and the proper subject of punishment. Destroy this consciousness, and the doctrine of endless misery exists no longer. But this doctrine is not necessarily true because God is a moral governor and we are conscious of deserving punishment.

But let me take another illustration. There is, as we all know, scarcely any opinion more prevalent in the world than that which relates to witches, wizards, spectres, hobgoblins, fairies, &c. &c. Some of them are believed in, not only in distant and heathen lands, but even enlightened Europe still clings with the greatest tenacity to its faith in them, and there are thousands and thousands in our own country, and indeed in this very city, who believe implicitly in the existence of ghosts,

in omens, dreams and fortune-telling. How many thousands there are around us who entertain the greatest confidence in lucky and unlucky days; and who would not start on a journey or commence any considerable work on Friday upon no consideration whatever.

Now a faith in these things has not been confined to a few people, but has spread over the whole earth. We find it in every age and every country; nor has Christianity, with all the lights of science, as yet been able to root out these vulgar superstitions from the public mind. But are these things true? On the contrary must they not be regarded as eminently false?

Whence then did they spring. They must have had an origin; and the man who denies or doubts them,is as much obliged to explain their origin, as we are to explain that of endless punishment. But every one acquainted with the subject knows how extremely difficult it is fully to account for them, or trace them to their origin; their history loses itself in the mists and darkness of ancient times. What then? Must we on that account insist that they are true in fact, and perfectly consonant with human nature, and therefore a faith in them is the product of reason, or a part of a special but long-lost revelation from God?

Now I maintain that the faith in ghosts and witches and goblins is as common, as general, as is the faith in endless misery, and ever has been.

And at the present moment even, it is probable there are as many believers in the former as the latter doctrine; and the believers in endless misery are as rapidly decreasing, in this country at least, as are those in witches, ghosts and goblins.

From these instances, to introduce no more, it is seen that the fact of a faith in any thing being general or commonly received furnishes no evidence of its truth, and we cannot therefore reason with the slightest safety from one to the other.

That it is difficult, and perhaps impossible to trace the doctrine of endless misery back to its source, I am quite willing to acknowledge; for like many other errors and superstitions, idolatry, witchcraft and the like, it undoubtedly had a pretty early origin, and an origin, too, which lies back, perhaps I may say, beyond the pale of all profane, and entirely without the sphere of sacred history. But whenever it arose, or wherever, and for what purpose soever it was called into existence, one fact is clear and most significant; and that is, that it originally appeared in the heathen world, and took its place with the grand system of falsehood and deception which so long held its sway over the great mass of mankind. This is a fact beyond all doubt or controversy. The doctrine of endless misery is no doctrine of Old Testament Revelation. It can boast no divine origin. Bishop Warburton tells us that even the Greek writers called future punishments for

eign, by which they meant Egyptian, and he says moreover that endless punishments were added to keep perverse and ungovernable dispositions in subjection. In this he is fully supported by ancient writers. Polybius, for instance, an ancient Greek historian, tells us plainly that "since the multitude is ever fickle and capricious, full of lawless passions and irrational and violent resentments, there is no way left to keep them in order, but by the terrors of future punishment and all the pompous circumstance that attends such kind of fiction. On which account, the ancients acted, in my opinion, with great judgment and penetration, when they contrived to bring in those notions of the gods and a future state into the popular belief." Strabo, another Greek writer, speaks to the same purpose. "It is impossible, he says, to govern women, and the gross body of the people, and to keep them pious, holy and virtuous, by the precepts of philosophy: This can only be done by the fear of the gods, which is raised and supported by ancient fictions and moder: prodigies." He tells us further that the “ apparatus of the ancient mythologies," was "an engine which the Legislators employed as bugbears to strike a terror into the childish imagination of the multitude."

Here it may be observed these authors speak of the doctrine of endless punishment, and the whole heathen system with which it stands con

nected as a device of legislators, designed to make the rabble more governable and therefore better subjects. And it is a curious and not uninstructive fact that these authors also speak of this punishmet as something in which they had not the least faith, as something unreal and imaginarywhat they called a fiction, a contrivance of the legislators, and its terrors mere bugbears to keep the multitude in order. But still they regarded it as a most excellent device, and one that could hardly be dispensed with, especially for" women and the gross body of the people." Some of the infidels of England during the last century, adopted the same view and denounced all who ventured to call in question the doctrine of endless torments; not because they believed it themselves! by no means; but simply because they thought it so useful to the state !

I confess, I have my fears that many of the stoutest advocates of that doctrine at the present day profess and preach it on no better grounds. They think it useful to make men religious, and therefore maintain it. But those well acquainted with the history of the ancient heathen world, may well entertain some doubts of the efficacy of this prescription, for it never carried the heathen to any great height of religion or virtue.

It is a fact, then, that the doctrine in question had its origin in the heathen world, and the heathen world enjoyed the exclusive benefits of it for